WE’RE HITTING THE ROAD (AND THE AIRWAYS)
Part 1: We are about to pack up the trusty CR-V and hit the road for our first road trip since 2023 as we head up to Missouri. Bethany’s nephew, the first boy to fully capture her heart as a newborn back in 2001, is getting married and our family is excitedly joining the celebration. While there we’ll get some time with some of our best friends in the world and enjoy a little break time from the otherwise busy spring we’ve had. Pray for our road-trip and time together with family and friends.
Part 2: From there, Joel will hop a flight to Los Angeles where he’ll connect with two other teammates for a long trip, thousands of more miles to Papua New Guinea or “PNG” as we call it. PNG is one of the countries with some of the highest concentration of distinct “ethno-linguistic groups”, people groups with their own distinct language. NTMPNG, our partner organization there is working with the PNG National church to plant churches and disciple believers among dozens of those people groups. Joel and his team are going to capture with video and photography, several of these works and programs there. It’ll be an exhausting 48 hours of travel there and then the team will spend time in five different communities or centers in the country and prepare to return to capture more stories next year. Pray for the team’s health and stamina. They’ll be in malaria-zones as well as traveling by small aircraft, possibly by helicopter, overland and on foot. One of the events the team will capture is the Bible Dedication for people group called the Lamogai. They’re received the ENTIRE Bible, Old and New Testaments in their “heart-language”, something that rarely takes place!
Part 3: After a few days following Joel’s international departure, Bethany, Owen, and Kate (all capable drivers now!) will hit the road for the journey back home to Florida. Note, I did not mention Jack; he’ll actually be flying to Missouri for the first few days to be at the wedding but needs to not miss much work and so he’ll fly home days before Bethany and the kids head home. It’s great to have Kate joining the ranks of drivers in the family. This is our first road trip since 2023 during which Bethany and I were the only drivers. So having the extra help on the road will be amazing. Pray for their safety and protection as they will head back without Joel. Overall, we’re all excited for a road-trip. It’s always been a means of travel that our family has enjoyed.
Travel Needs
As we travel much more in this year and coming years, we really need to upgrade and replace a lot of aging travel gear. What we have is a collection of suitcases and backpacks dating back to wedding gifts and a few random pieces we have collected from the “Mission Barrel”, our local missionary donation center. You can give towards this need by heading to our giving page at Ethnos360 and specifically noting in the notes section: “Please communicate to Joel Potter that this gift amount is for travel gear”.